There’s something so quaint about the way most Millennials grew up. Before the age of cell phones but after the age of the stranger danger, latch-key Gen X childhood, most of us would disappear out the door on weekends and summer vacations with nothing more than a “Be back home at dinner, sweetie.”
Fast forward a couple of particularly mean decades, and now parents are hiding AirTag trackers in their kids’ shoes. That’s in addition to the smartphones (basically big trackers) most of them carry in their pockets.
I won’t judge. I’m not a parent, so I can get all nostalgic about my childhood because A, I survived it, and B, nobody can say for sure how they’d parent until they are a parent. Sketchers has released a line of girls’ and boys’ shoes with a hidden compartment for AirTags. They’re now on sale, and from the outside, you’d never be able to tell they’re not regular shoes.
underfoot
Lift up the insole, and there’s a small cutout in the footbed for an Apple AirTag tracker, although I suppose you could fit any small Bluetooth or GPS tracker in there, too. Sketchers calls it Find My Sketchers, which is awfully similar to Apple’s Find My app that locates iPads, iPhones, Macs, and AirPods.
There are currently 11 pairs of Sketchers with the feature, all GO RUN Elevate 2.0. Nine of the pairs are for boys, and only two are for girls. Is that a message or something? Given that I was a dumb little boy who’d wander off across the street with neighborhood kids in tow, enticing them with trips into the forest or Burger King, I can totally buy that.
Most of the boys’ versions run $58, and you’ve got to buy the AirTag separately. Some cost $52, matching the cost of the two girls’ versions. There’s a 50% off deal on a second pair, so I guess if you’re going to track one of your kids, Sketchers figures you may as well track them all.
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